Monday, 13 December 2010

Chrome Browser Media Player

So, the browser is the media player! When you drag and drop an mp3 onto the Chrome Browser..

It might not look like much, but this is the start of a new empire.

MP4s use the same interface. The controls vanish when the mouse moves rolls off the video. Full screen looks like this:

Beautiful. Minimal. Google.

Mov files look different...

This one is 720p full screen - is quicktime baked in? If you drop another mov video in it refuses to play. You have to go to a normal html page first.

The Chrome Browser on my PCwill also play .wmv but not avi.

So the Chrome browser (and therefore Chrome OS) is the media player - there is no separate application. But as Maks points out above, how do you open files from USB stick or SD card in Chrome OS?

As lunigma points out on Reddit in Chrome OS it's called Content Browser:

When you insert media a panel will open up showing the files stored there. There are few images of Content Browser online.

In this interview, Google product management director Caesar Sengupta explains that a minimal cache of internal storage will also be browsable...

At this point, I get a little confused....

So, say you have spent a lifetime building up a collection of 80Gb of music. Are Google really suggesting you dump that and start paying to listen to (probably) the same music with the added possibility of losing your internet connection? Does the same apply to movies?

64Gb SD cards are not unusual these days. If capacity doubles every 18 months, In six years 1Tb SD cards will be standard. Hopefully Google (or third party developers) will give Chrome OS a really good content browser, playlist editor and media player and it will be a huge success, otherwise it could feel crippled.